UCSD Researchers Create Artificial Cell Membrane

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UCSD Researchers Create Artificial Cell Membrane

Posted by Unknown on Monday January 30, 2012 @08:11PM from the sr-819-around-the-corner dept.

cylonlover writes with an excerpt from a Gizmag article: "The cell membrane is one of the most important components of a cell because it separates the interior from the environment and controls the movement of substances in and out of the cell. In a move that brings mankind another step closer to being able to create artificial life forms from scratch, chemists from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and Harvard University have created artificial self-assembling cell membranes using a novel chemical reaction. The chemists hope their creation will help shed light on the origins of life." The full paper is available in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (behind a paywall).

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And now onto stage two.... by Sneeze1066 · 2012-01-30 20:24 · Score: 5, Funny

....where researchers will attempt to insert "insane" into membrane.
1. Re:And now onto stage two.... by Black+Parrot · 2012-01-30 20:43 · Score: 2
  
  ....where researchers will attempt to insert "insane" into membrane.
  No, that happens automatically, when some passing demon notices the soulless organism and decides to take up residency.
  Then the screaming begins.
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
2. Re:And now onto stage two.... by interval1066 · 2012-01-30 21:07 · Score: 2
  
  I think you need to make an appointment with your witch doctor, your bodily humors appear to be out of balance and I think a gnome is dancing on your spleen.
  
  --
  Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
sigh... by Black+Parrot · 2012-01-30 20:41 · Score: 4, Funny

We're finally figuring out the origin of life, with less than a year left for us.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:LFS by Samantha+Wright · 2012-01-30 21:06 · Score: 4, Interesting

We're still some ways off! So far we've got the ability to throw a new membrane and a chromosome at a pre-existing cell; there's still a ton of stuff that goes on in between. We still don't know exactly how a lot of it works; there are lots of little protein structures in bacterial cytoplasm that will take a lot of diligent study to figure out. Some day, though. Some day.

(Also, is it just me, or is S nowhere near Y on any keyboard layout ever?)

--
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Re:LFS by Jappus · 2012-01-30 21:32 · Score: 2

(Also, is it just me, or is S nowhere near Y on any keyboard layout ever?)
It is -- on German keyboard layouts.
Sust yo sou know, just like the one I use. ;)
fun, but... by louic · 2012-01-31 01:11 · Score: 2

This is interesting chemistry, but has not got much to do with life or realistic cell membranes.
1. Re:fun, but... by interkin3tic · 2012-01-31 04:40 · Score: 2
  
  The suggestion, at least from the blurb, is that this may have been important to the origins of life. And how does it not have much to do with realistic cell membranes? You have a phospholipid bilayer with these things. That's the same thing as cell membranes basically, throw in some proteins (researchers have been adding proteins to artificial bilayers for decades) and you can get them to do exactly the same things that cell membranes do.
  
  It's a bit like saying "This brick wall you've just made out of bricks and mortar is interesting, but it doesn't have a lot to do with realistic brick and mortar walls on houses."
2. Re:fun, but... by louic · 2012-01-31 05:00 · Score: 2
  
  I read the actual article and the authors have used a chemical reaction (that is not the same as the one used in nature), to make lipids (but not the actual ones that nature makes). Once they got the lipids the bilayer forms itself, but that is nothing new. The reaction is carried out in water, and the substrates are not reactive unless a catalyst is added, which leads them to claim that this is more "natural" than a standard chemical reaction. Using the word "life" or "nature" in this context is IMHO not appropriate.
3. Re:fun, but... by Rutulian · 2012-01-31 06:15 · Score: 2
  
  Well, they say it is biomimetic. It's about as close as anybody ever gets. The important part is that the properties of the artificial membranes (at least the ones they measured) are the same as for the natural membranes they were trying to mimic. It's a JACS communication, so there isn't a lot of detail, but it looks like a pretty good model. There are a lot of potential uses, not the least of which is they can more easily study how additional components in the membrane (ex: proteins) affect its properties.
Re:Why? by FunkyLich · 2012-01-31 01:18 · Score: 2

I don't think that life from scratch and FTL are completely interchangeable as analogies for each other. FTL is very subtle and almost reasonable when one goes to prove it theoretically, but to what I know it has been shown to be a fallacy. Life from scratch on the other hand, is still possible in theory: basically some elements that come together to form more complicated compounds. There's a lot more to be known on the practical side: how exactly do these compounds form (aminoacids as part of starforming clouds maybe), how do they combine on the first place (is water needed as a catalyst? Does radiation play a role into the process, for good or for bad?) and many other things.
I think that research in trying to form life from scratch can actually tackle the same problems you have mentioned: DNA replication mechanisms, energy generation, organelles, etc. But the tunnel is now being dug from the other end: from the start and simplest and towards the more complicated. We have already made some progress while reducing the complicated. So why not try the other method as well? By definition, they must converge at some point, as part of one mechanism, one theory, the same thing.
Big deal. . . by CrtxReavr · 2012-01-31 03:31 · Score: 2

. . . we did this in high school Biology with hotdog casing.

--
"So is the BSD licence even more 'free' (than GPLv2)? Yes. Unquestionably." --Linus Torvalds (TinyURL.com/2vugzl)
"Click" chemistry by Cinnamon+Whirl · 2012-01-31 05:23 · Score: 2

Althought the paper manages not to mention it, the chemistry they are doing here is (the alkyne azide cyclisation) is part of "click" chemistry, which is quite well known.

What the paper doesn't really say is whether they hope to accomplish anything further with this. As with all biomimetic reaction, it seems (to me) that synthesising a single step in the process may be intersting, without doing all the previous steps, is there any practical point?